The Spanish economy will shrink by about 1.5 per cent this year as a contraction that began last quarter deepens, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said in an interview published on Sunday.
"The first quarter of the year is going to be hard, even harder than the last quarter of 2011, with a decline in GDP of more than 0.3 per cent. I think the second quarter will also be negative," he told daily newspaper El Pais.
"The government believes that the economic contraction this year will be around the 1.5 per cent which the Bank of Spain has estimated."
Gross domestic product declined 0.3 per cent in last quarter of 2011 from the previous three months, the first such contraction since the end of 2009, official data showed last week, as Spain slipped towards its second recession in two years.
Last month the Bank of Spain predicted the economy would contract by 1.5 per cent in 2012, before posting a modest recovery of 0.2 per cent in 2013.
The central bank had previously estimated in March that the economy would expand by 1.5 per cent this year.
The International Monetary Fund has forecast a deeper contraction of 1.7 per cent in 2012 and a further decline of 0.3 per cent in 2013.
Spain emerged only at the start of 2010 from an 18-month recession triggered by a global financial crisis and a property bubble collapse that destroyed millions of jobs and left behind huge bad loans and debts.
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